Why the future of Greece lies in the rise of a new civil society and education

One of the biggest challenges for post-austerity Greece will be the rebuilding of a strong civil society. Future foundations are already being laid out through new and exciting citizen initiatives, but much is yet to be done.

A TEDx conference in Athens. Flickr/TEDx Athens. Some rights reserved.

A
light breeze of transformation seems to have started blowing silently in
Greece. The younger generation has inspired a wave of voluntary initiatives and
actions targeted at resolving collective problems in the last couple of years.
The recent manifestations are numerous and exciting: voluntary-based events
that encourage structured debate and spreading new ideas, such as those
organised by Intelligence
Squared
and TEDxAthens; urban regeneration actions such as Imagine
the City;
network-building platforms for volunteers such as Human Grid, #Tutorpool and Citizens 2.0 that encourage collaborative action between citizens
and a rethinking of the institutional status quo; social contribution-oriented
crowdfunding platforms such as Up Greek
Tourism;
Groopio, Greece Debt
Free
and community projects such as the Swapping
Bookshelf;
and even state-organised events for young people directed at spreading ideas
about voluntarism, education and innovation, such as Meet
Greece 2.0.

All
these initiatives have enormous value. Each one of them carries a tiny dose of
the medicine that can help cure the social pathologies that preceded the
economic malaise currently traumatising the country (and that will surely succeed
this crisis too, if not drastically tackled now).

The
medicine – which the citizenry itself seems to be administering to Greek
society – is the sum of all the bonds of collaboration, trustworthiness,
solidarity and mutual aid that are developed during collective (mainly
voluntary) initiatives. These bonds enable people to work together, learn from
each other and build what is known as social capital. According to Robert
Putnam’s widely quoted description, social capital refers to ‘the connections among
individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness
that arise from them’ and is the fundamental ingredient of a healthy civil
society.

In
the last decade, Greek civil society has been repeatedly characterised as
‘underdeveloped’, ‘poorly organised’, ‘with few and weak civil society
organisations’, subject to a ‘dominant central government’ and, overall, as
having a ‘limited impact on society at large’ (although some have argued that a
rather stronger ‘informal’ civil society exists too). What
this means is that, compared with other European countries, until recently very
few citizens were likely to engage in voluntary or non-voluntary collective
actions aimed at the general welfare, or to donate money for such purposes.
Although such findings are occasionally reported in the mainstream press,
little attention is paid to what it reallymeans to lack the
societal benefits of a healthy civil society.

Civil
society is an irreplaceable democratic institution and represents a formal or
informal societal element that is beyond, independent, and not directed by states,
governments, political parties or markets. It allows citizens to form social
networks of trust, cooperation and action to achieve collective aims and
resolve common problems.

A
healthy civil society encourages the formation of groups composed of
people who neither know one another nor share a common background, but who can
facilitate a rise in a society’s stock of social capital. A strong current of
social science research has long conceded that citizen interactions under the
auspices of a healthy civil society (and through voluntary community work)
constitute an inherently democratic process because they allow citizens to
develop civic skills (more on this below) and social capital.

That
a society characterised by high civic virtue and trust has significant
democratic benefits should hardly come as big or recent news – especially for
the citizens of Greece. Pericles succinctly and memorably highlighted Athens’
economic and democratic prosperity 2,400 years ago in his famous funeral
oration:

There
is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are notsuspicious of one another,
nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes [...] We make our friends
by conferring, not by receiving favours. Now he who confers a favour is the
firmer friend, because he would rather by kindness keep alive the memory of an
obligation; but the recipient is colder in his feelings, because he knows that
in requiting another's generosity he will not be winning gratitude but only
paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbors not upon a calculation of
interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless
spirit.

What
is celebrated by Pericles, and has since been stressed by dozens of social
scientists, is the value of mutual obligation and cooperation – key features of
a society characterised by high social capital – and citizens’ trust (as
opposed to suspicion) in each other and in the society’s institutions for the
democratic cohesion of a community.

As
I have noted previously, over the last two decades there has
been a visible lack of trust in Greece: among citizens in each other, and
between citizens and social and political institutions. Evidence from some of
the world’s most credible fact-gathering organisations, such as the World Bank, the World
Values Survey, the European
Social Survey, Transparency
International and the Eurobarometer, places Greece among the last in Europe in
citizen-to-citizen and institutional trust. Social scientists have long studied
social trust and the stock of social capital in Greek society and found it to
be very low.

Today
in Greece, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe, we think that most people
cannot be trusted, that they would rather take advantage of us than be fair,
and that they are more likely to look after themselves than try to be helpful.
Greek people have lost virtually all trust in politicians (a trait that is,
however, far from unique among western societies), political parties and the
parliament, while their trust in the institution of democracy itself is
vanishing.[1]

Why
become a member of an NGO or community group if you are suspicious about the
true motives of the other members? Why help your fellow citizen when you
suspect that she, in fact, does not need any help and that all she cares about
is herself? Why donate your time for voluntary work? Why would anyone? Trust,
as Ken Newton notes ‘forms the context of social relations and it is based on
experience of social relations’ and a culture of distrust is the defining
symptom of a society with low social capital, and one that blocks the
development of a healthy civil society.

Yet
it is precisely the blending of citizens with diverse backgrounds and profiles
in collective processes that fosters the development of the civic skills that
citizens need to successfully participate in public life. By civic skills I
mean those that play a fundamental role in the functioning of democracy,
such as:

-
learning to discuss and engage in conversations with others, rather than
initiating monologues that result in ideological food fights;

-
learning to negotiate with others and solve common problems in a cooperative
and creative fashion; and, most importantly

-
learning to tolerate others and, as Bertrand Russell wisely said, come to terms
with and put up with the fact that some people say things others don't like.

The
importance of acquiring civic skills for active participation in civil society,
and public life in general, is another issue that has not preoccupied only
today’s thinkers, politicians and critical citizens. It was also a serious
matter of debate in antiquity. The central disagreement between the philosopher
Socrates and the sophist Protagoras was whether civic virtue, an essential
prerequisite for participating in public life, was transferable[2]. Responding to Socrates, who was doubtful that
civic skills could be taught and transferred, Protagoras claimed that citizens
could (and ought) to learn them in order to be able to develop sound judgement
(ευβουλία) about private and community issues, and to be able to
successfully manage their personal affairs and participate not just with words,
but also with actions, in public life. Pericles’ words are also instructive:

For,
unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as
unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we
cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in
the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action
at all.

For
Pericles, respecting one’s fellow citizens, accepting obligations from them and
returning them to them, and acting justly were priceless skills for a society
that belongs equally to each and every (Athenian) citizen, and were essential
prerequisites for living alongside each other harmoniously. Today, 2,400 years
later, social research agrees that civic skills advance democratic values:
the more knowledgeable citizens are about civic principles, and the more they
participate in voluntary and community-based initiatives, the more likely they
are to support democratic values – starting with tolerance in others.

This
ideal of civic virtue lies at the centre of an active civil society that is
mobilised for collective problem solving. Only such a civil society can help cultivate
the skills that Greek citizens so desperately need to develop.

The
important question that inevitably arises from such thoughts is: what steps can
we take to bring us closer to a society in which more citizens internalise and
act on the basis of these ideals, especially during such troubled times? Social
research findings can come in handy here once again.

One
of the long-standing findings of social research is the long-term and defining
impact of participation in extracurricular and voluntary associations during childhood on civic engagement. Injecting civic education into schools,
participating in voluntary associations and engaging in community service
programmes that combine community outreach allow children and young adults to
develop participatory skills and an interest in and concern about the general
welfare. Although civic skills are already part of the school curriculum in
Greece (though only once, at 3rd grade), much more can be done on the
institutional, community and individual levels, especially when the social
fabric is under such strain and the formal institutional structure is highly
dysfunctional.

As
I have argued elsewhere, it is indeed up to the citizens themselves to bring
about social change by engaging in the necessary initiatives. Why not help the
new generation develop civic skills (and virtue) when it is so obvious that
this is what went fundamentally wrong in the past? Cementing young people’s
civic socialisation can have generation-defining outcomes. On the institutional
level, schools should embed voluntary work into their programmes and offer regular,
practical voluntary training. Civic socialisation can also be achieved through
schoolchildren’s voluntary learning programmes initiated by NGOs with
experienced members. These specialists could take groups of schoolchildren and
their parents on volunteering exercises on a frequent basis. This is
already offered by a number of Greek NGOs but must become much
more widespread.

On
the community level, this can be done by organising more (and more frequent)
voluntary initiatives for children and young adults to help them learn to
tackle local problems together: spending a Saturday cleaning a plot littered
with rubbish, or cooking for the local homeless are just two examples. In the
neighbourhood, socialisation can be the outcome of a decision made by a few
neighbouring families or friends who live in the same street that grows into a
community initiative, or the outcome of a parents’ association in the local
school. Still more fundamentally, this process may well involve taking one’s
little sister or child to give a helpful hand for a few hours to the local
immigrant centre, homeless shelter, reforestation group or a local charity that
delivers goods to poverty-stricken families at Christmas.

There
is a large segment of the new generation that understands the roots of Greece’s
social problems much better than the older generation. The biggest gift
citizens of Greece can give to this younger generation, which is the only true
agent of change in the country, is to make sure their social upbringing is not
only characterised, but defined, by the mentality, attitudes, norms and
values that have been silently lost over time: trust, social consciousness,
tolerance, cooperation, solidarity and mutual aid.

A
light breeze of transformation seems to have started blowing in Greece. Whether
it will turn into a wind of change is up to its citizens.

[1] This last development is particularly painful because of two reasons.
First, because of the rapidity in which it is happening: according to empirical
research based on the World Values Survey, in 2002, Greece was one of the
countries with the most highly committed citizens in the democratic ideas in
the world in a sample that includes countries from Western, Southern, Central
and Eastern Europe and North and South America and Asia. Second, because of the
rapidity in which ultra-right undemocratic ideas are breeding within society.

[2] It is worth noting that for both Protagoras and Socrates, civic virtue
is mostly related to the craft of politics.

Some of the views expressed in this article arose from
the debate panel 'Mobilising for Problem Solving' of the 'Meet Greece v 2.0'
event, organised in Athens by the General Secretariat for Youth, December
14-15.

About the author

Yannis
Theocharis is Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mannheim Centre
for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, where he also
lectures on Internet and Politics. His research interests include political
behaviour, social capital, protest activism and the internet. He has
participated in numerous academic conferences and has given talks on activism,
new media and social capital in public events.

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